I’ve had a rash of 2019 CBR books that needed more focus and a harsher editor. Welcome to the club, Valley of the Gods.
This book follows the fellowship award recipients of Peter Thiel’s “stop out” entrepreneurial contest, young people encouraged to start companies in Silicon Valley rather than pursuing careers through the traditional college system. I think. There were so many tangents about Silicon Valley life, oddballs, and earlier success stories that I’m hard pressed to say that this book is truly centered on any one theme.
These stories can be entertaining, but could have done with a tighter focus; I’m still not sure what exactly Laura Denning was trying to achieve other than extending human life, or how exactly Burnham lost patience with the tech sector once his grant proposal – asteroid mining – turned out to be untenable.
That said, I enjoyed the asides too – how can you not be hooked by billionaire libertarian polyamorous floating island colonies? – so I think the failure here is one of organization rather than poor choices regarding inclusion or exclusion of content. There’s an interesting book in here, it’s just scrambled.